Were you conditioned by academia to think that love poems, short poems, funeral poems and other forms of poetry are stuffy, profound waxings on the natural world and the human condition? Think again.

Love poems didn’t start as private confessions. For much of their history, they were closer to public performances—tools for politics, status, ...

When we were both young and unknown poets, Patricia Lockwood had a blog with the tagline “Poems Are Jokes.” For years, this phrase has come back to me, when I hear an especially poetic joke or read an ...